I swear if I see one more comment from one more white person talking 'bout how Henry Louis Gates should have been more polite to the cops, I'm gonna finally figure out how to reach through my laptop's display to choke a motherfucker.

i know it shouldn't be, but it is amazing to me how many white people are actually *totally incapable* of putting themselves in shoes of color. the idea that a black person might have a perfectly normal "wtf?" reaction to someone being ludicrous is totally foreign. i really think they assume that black folks walk around in a delusional haze all the time.

The past couple of weeks have been filled with me asking myself, why are you reading internet comments, WHY. It is disheartening for sure.

Also I love the people who are like, "But the POLICE REPORT said..." Oh ho! Yes, we know how truthful the police are when they write their totally unbiased reports about the time they harassed a respected Harvard intellectual in his own home!

On another journal post about this, wild_irises said that cops "arrest people they read as housebreakers and criminals and they negotiate with people they read as confused or overwrought homeowners."

This sums up my opinions about this -- the police, as part of their job, have to deal with a lot of distressed and confused people who have not done anything wrong. The police damn well better know how to deal politely and effectively with an innocent person who is feeling emotionally overwhelmed. By arresting him, the officer is sending a clear message that he does not see Professor Gates as part of the category of "upstanding homeowners who might be emotional under stress", but instead is putting him in the category of "housebreakers and criminals".

The thing is, he was polite when they arrived, it was after they kept giving him shit that he decided it was time to upbraid them. I dunno about you, but that sounds about like my tolerance level too. I speak calmly so I know I'm not going to get shot in the first few minutes. Then I lay it out for them because they're in *my house*. Now that the President has commented, I think it's pretty clear where there careers go, and where every cop on that force is going. They're sunk, and everyone else is going to have to treat black people like white people for awhile. (Is that; whitewashing?) Hopefully, for like, the entire time the President is in office, perhaps even long enough for a new learning curve to happen and prejudice to stop. And if that doesn't happen in 3 years, then we just vote for Obama again, and then they're on their tippy toes for nearly a decade. :)